2021 was a milestone year for the Neo ecosystem, and a year of growth for the blockchain industry in general. As 2021 draws to a close, Neo News Today reached out to representatives from across the Neo ecosystem to collect their personal reflections on the year that was.

Erik Zhang – Neo Founder

2021 was an extraordinary year for Neo, we launched the Neo N3 MainNet in August, the most powerful and feature-rich version of the Neo blockchain, it’s complete enough to be called an “all-in-one” blockchain system.

I will certainly continue its optimization and improvement, and may also launch N4 or N5 in the future, but for now, I prefer to bring more applications to Neo – not just blockchain applications, but Internet applications as well, and also allocate some time to work on other new projects within the ecosystem like Galaxz and One Gate.

Galaxz is a sci-fi space adventure MMORPG, about which ideas were born early on, including a huge worldview of subtle complexity, improbable plot twists, and many of my own philosophical thoughts.

OneGate is more than just a wallet. It was designed to be a gateway to the blockchain world for normal Internet users. We will come with more exciting projects like these in the future, I can’t wait to explore more possibilities with Neo and with you.

John deVadoss – NGD Enterprise

It has been very fulfilling to see the successful launch of N3! Kudos and congratulations are due to the core developers! It has been very gratifying watching our own projects and our broad base of developers adopt the Blockchain Toolkit as their toolset of choice!

From a policy perspective – in 2022, will the center hold? Or will it fold? Our own work on global technology standards will play a pivotal role in the response.

From a developer perspective – we have a significant backlog of capabilities and features, much of it based on community dialogue that we are keen to ship.

Most of all, from a community perspective – I want to say THANK YOU to everyone that used N3 and our tools! Once again, we promise to raise the industry bar with innovation.

Merry Christmas and a very prosperous and happy New Year!

Odd Jørgen Røland – Flamingo Finance

The most exciting year of our lives thus far is behind us when we step over to the brand new year of 2022. The best feeling moving forward is that we know this is just the beginning of exciting years, and the plans for the future don’t lower our expectations of what is to come.

Reading about N3 in December 2020, joining the community the same month, and then being able to play a significant role in the migration of Flamingo from Neo Legacy to Neo N3 within a year is a surreal thought. It’s been a year of hard work, little sleep, frustration, and most of all, joy!

It’s difficult to look back when there are so many exciting things in the future. I would like to reflect on the fantastic people we have come to know through 2021. It has been amazing to be a part of the Neo and Flamingo community. I feel overwhelmed when I think about how many hardworking and admirable people are in the ecosystem! And the way the community has taken us in and supported us from day one is fantastic; what makes Neo is the people! (And that includes everyone from developers to people on the Discord server.)

I want to say thank you to each and every one of you who asks questions, retweets, makes articles, writes code, posts memes, or in any way is a part of making the living organism Neo and Flamingo has become. Without your help in 2021, we would not be here. Let’s make even more noise in 2022!

Vincent Geneste – GhostMarket

Looking back at the past year and how fast it went, many would have preferred to see Neo N3 ship earlier, or would have liked the transition from Neo Legacy to Neo N3 to be shorter, but guess what – that time is now behind us!

With most of Neo N3 core features already live and running, except a few select ones (hello Neo Name Service!), I think that 2022 will be the year of mass migration / launch of dApps on Neo N3, and given how well equipped we are in terms of toolsets / smart contract language choices, it’s going to be a blast to see all those new dApps rolling out one by one. I’m convinced mass adoption will come sooner than we think, given the extreme ease of use with the current tools to allow you to program, test, and deploy very powerful dApps/contracts on Neo N3.

I’m personally highly addicted to everything NFT related, so I’m particularly eager to find out what cool projects will launch, and find out all the very interesting native features to be implemented with NFT (NeoFS / NeoID etc), as it will open the door to new unexplored avenues, simply not available on other blockchains, at least not easily / natively.

Michael Fabozzi – Rentfuse

2021 was a year full of new beginnings.

The metaverse started to take root, Neo N3 launched and Rentfuse was born. I started it with an idea to build a way to rent NFTs on the blockchain and now we are three people working passionately about a project ready to be brought to life.

What a year it was!

2022 will be a year full of new applications.

Rentfuse will be launched along with a lot of new dApps and NFT adoption will grow more and more. Everyone is starting to notice how powerful this technology is and how much it can affect our life. What a year it will be!

Profound changes are coming. We are entering the meta-era.

Tyler Adams – COZ

2021 was a truly amazing year for our ecosystem and COZ. I will always remember Edge making a comment to me at NCA in 2019 about “… not hearing very much from COZ lately …” That comment has stuck with me over the past two years and, in my opinion, we really countered that sentiment in 2021. The entire ecosystem did, if there was ever any question.

It’s great to see so many projects adopting the Neo N3 platform after only a few months of MainNet. It’s even more impressive that all of these projects are cohesively working together to deliver on the vision of the smart economy.

In 2022, one of the major focuses for us will be platform scalability. When I say that, I don’t mean in the traditional blockchain sense of “How do we pack more transactions into our blocks.” We will be scaling outwards by delivering features that enable application developers to build experiences which haven’t previously been feasible in this space.

It’s a very exciting time to be a part of our community.

Guil. Sperb Machado – AxLabs

Despite the long journey, Neo N3 is here, and it’s a reality. Together with the whole Neo ecosystem, we worked hard in 2021 to deliver top-notch tools right on time for Neo N3 launch.

In fact, a lot happened in 2021… especially for us at AxLabs. We were delighted to see several projects/exchanges/companies using our tools, such as Binance, OKEx, NekoHit, and NeoCandy — most as a result of the Neo N3 Hackathon. Moreover, we’ve got more responsibilities: AxLabs was appointed a Neo Council Member, reinforcing our long-lasting commitment to make Neo even greater. Our journey of bringing the best developer experience in the whole blockchain industry is definitely not over.

But now, it’s time to shout out loud saying “we’ve made it!” 2021 clearly showed that the Neo community is one of the strongest ones in the blockchain industry. Thanks to everyone that contributed to the successful Neo N3 launch. You’re awesome!

Let’s relax for a few days to come fully energized for 2022. We’ll need to SPREAD THE WORD and tell people we have, TODAY, all the instruments for the rollout of projects that can be real game-changers.

Songping Que – Neo Global Development

2021 was a crazy year for crypto investors with the cryptocurrency market value blowing past $3 trillion. With DeFi, NFT, DAO, Metaverse, and more and more keywords hitting the headlines, I have never felt more that digital assets are going mainstream. The second half of 2021 was crazy for the entire Neo community because of the launch of long-waited Neo N3 MainNet. The most feature-complete blockchain network with native decentralized file storage, oracle, Neo Name Service, and NeoID, the smart economy has never felt closer.

Someday when we look back, we will find out that 2021 is meant to be a critical year in the history of digital asset adoption, also in the repository of Neo. The first global virtual hackathon/Neo Frontier Launchpad, the biggest digital assets migration/Mass migration from Neo Legacy to N3, the optimized dual token economics fueling the on-chain governance, the continuous announcement of Early Adoption projects… all the foundations that will help Neo to thrive were laid down in 2021, where N3 starts.

Brett Rhodes – Neo News Today

The Neo rebrand in 2017 brought with it a vision that would influence many of us to take part in its evolution. A way to coexist and collaborate in a way that is open, decentralized, and impartial. This vision was not unique to Neo, and like others, we quickly uncovered the current limits of blockchain and the long road ahead.

Financial revolution was inevitable as the first port of call for blockchain, the home of cryptocurrency. Open access networks, equal opportunity for users. DeFi proved that the digital frontier could shatter physical and bureaucratic boundaries. Many impressive L1 platforms emerged in 2021, each demonstrating itself a capable host for DeFi and other on-chain innovations. But what of the other revolutions we are waiting for? When would blockchain make a real difference in day to day life, around the world? Well, not this year.

I still believe that blockchain has the potential to catalyse real change. To fundamentally improve the way we treat each other and the way we treat the planet we share. But I also believe that it cannot happen until anyone can play a part in the transformation, building applications that can truly influence the world. As many projects have learned, it certainly takes more than an impressive L1.

The vision for Neo in 2017 was fulfilled in 2021. It, like others, delivered an exceptional L1. It also delivered rich native functionality, to support any use case that can leverage blockchain as a source of truth.

Most important of all, it brought unparalleled accessibility for developers, the builders of the Smart Economy. It was no small feat. The diligence displayed by the Neo core and development communities in achieving it was particularly inspirational for me.

With Neo, there are no more barriers to building world-changing decentralized applications. The tools meet you where you are, in the languages you love, and the feature set is there to meet your every need. No other platform is quite so ready to serve the world the way that Neo is now. I’m fascinated to see where we go from here.